


All Paths Lead Back to You

by Boschling



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-07
Updated: 2019-12-08
Packaged: 2021-02-18 12:41:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21710914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Boschling/pseuds/Boschling
Summary: Thoros' daemon is lazy, hedonistic and has no time for gods. Inconvenient, especially for a priest. But she's also a romantic, and that's going to get him killed.Chapter 1 traces TV/History and Lore canon from Thoros' childhood in Myr through Robert's Rebellion through meeting Beric. Chapter 2 is everything that happens next.
Relationships: Beric Dondarrion/Thoros of Myr
Comments: 19
Kudos: 24





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! I hope you enjoy this two-shot. It started as my Thoros/Beric prequel for GoT (borrowing heavily from the Lord of Light History and Lore episode) but then... well I've always really wanted to read a daemon AU that involved Beric. Like what happens when he dies and comes back?!?! And I waited and waited and finally decided that if I gave it my best shot, maybe somebody would be inspired to do it better!

When Thoros was little, before he was given (sold) to the temple, Diony mostly took the form of insects. He didn’t remember much of that time before the temple, but he remembered the hunger. Diony thought hunger hurt less if you were very small. Thoros could remember curling under the table by the fire, because the pangs were less fierce if he brought his knees to his chest. He remembered Diony as a shiny green beetle, trying to make him giggle by crawling over his nose, then settling on the rim of his ear. He would watch the fire burn and she would whisper stories to him about a place where everyone had enough to eat.

He had been the youngest of eight, and they had competed fiercely for the scraps at hand. He remembered fragments of their faces, the others. Five other boys and two girls, their features pinched in the same way his were, the sharp elbows, the sunken eyes. He did not remember their names or their daemons.

He remembered his mother as a soft sweet presence who cried sometimes, her dog daemon leaning against her. It was not any particular type of dog that he could recall—a mutt like the rest of them. His father was sterner, and the day he told Thoros to come with him, Thoros knew that something was off. His mother had kissed him and he thought she was crying again. And then his father had taken his hand and tugged him along out the door. His father rarely touched any of them, and was even more rarely present during daylight hours. He worked on someone’s farm maybe? Thoros couldn’t remember. He came home late at night and left at dawn. 

But today he was here, and holding Thoros’ hand, and Thoros realized they were walking into the city proper, which was a grand treat indeed. They hadn’t lived behind the great walls of Myr, only in one of the environs that had sprung up around it like children clinging to their mother’s skirt. His father’s daemon had been a sheep, and it had slowly plodded beside them. Diony had taken the shape of a horsefly for sport, and made buzzing dives at his father’s daemon. But the ewe had paid her no mind, and at last she grew weary of the game and shifted into a grasshopper that nestled into his red topknot and occasionally chirped when they passed something of interest.

The chirps gradually grew more frequent, until his father snapped at him to shut his daemon up before he boxed his ears. For as they winded their way toward the great city, they were gradually joined by all sorts of other travelers, rich and poor alike. The only thing they had in common was that they were all heading in the same direction. Myr proper was wonderful, full of sights and sounds and the brightest colors Thoros had ever seen. Only his father’s iron grip on his hand kept him from touching the wispy bits of lace they passed or the wonderful tapestries on display. His jaw dropped at the great open market, with people from strange places who spoke strange tongues. Diony became a hummingbird so she could see better, and flitted this way and that, buzzing in excitement.

It was the grandest sight he had ever seen, and though Thoros had occasion to travel much further afield than the average man and had occasion to see much larger and more exotic cities, there was something magic about that moment that he never could quite recapture. Just as well—for as far as he went, he never did manage to shake the city. It followed after him, just a syllable behind, the only family name he could ever claim or want.

The Free City of Myr, craftiest of the quarrelsome sisters in more ways than one, famous for its glass, its lace, its tapestries... It was cheerfully and unapologetically mercantile, and the greatest grandest buildings were the banks and the exchequer. They did not stop there. His father towed him to a large but plain and unadorned gate, with guards on either side in red. It smelled smoky around here, and Thoros wrinkled his nose at the acrid sensation.

“Stay here,” his father said, in a tone so dire that for once Thoros decided to obey.

His father re-emerged sometime later—not very long—accompanied by a severe looking woman with pretty hair who did not smile. She pinched his arm and frowned.

“He’s skin and bones,” she said flatly to his father.

His father shrugged. 

“Wouldn’t be giving him to you if there was enough to go around.”

“Let’s see your teeth,” she said to Thoros. Automatically, he shut his mouth.

She smacked him hard against the face, and as he prepared to cry out in outrage, she grabbed his chin and held it.

“Looks healthy enough,” she ignored his howl, his pathetic attempts to break her grip. “Where’s his daemon?”

Diony had been some kind of centipede, but at the woman’s slap she had become a wasp. She now swooped toward her face, buzzing dangerously. The woman arched an eyebrow, neither afraid nor amused.

“Change much, does it?” 

“Sorry ma’am?” His father was confused.

“His daemon, does it change much?” The woman sniffed, like Thoros’ father was something unpleasant she had found on the bottom of her shoe.

Thoros’ father blinked, and Thoros knew he was utterly incapable of answering that question. He had neither the time nor the energy nor the inclination to notice his children’s daemons.

“A middling amount,” his father allowed cautiously. “It likes to be a nuisance.”

Then realizing that what he had said was not in his own interest, he tried to backtrack.

“Thoros is a good boy. He’ll do what you tell him.”

At that the woman looked at Thoros and smiled a cold thin smile. Diony took shelter in the shell of his ear, and Thoros twitched with the effort it took not to shake her out.

“I doubt it. But he’ll learn,” the woman said.

“So you’ll take him?” His father asked, with perhaps the first spark of energy he’d shown all day.

The woman drew a small coin purse out of a pocket and counted something into his father’s hands. He couldn’t really see, and that bothered him. That he never found out what he was worth. But at the time, he only watched with puzzlement, too focused on his now bleeding nose from where she had hit him and the metallic tang of his own blood in his mouth. She didn’t count very much, but his father nodded and looked pleased. Whatever he had gotten had vanished into his pocket with magical speed.

“Come with me,” she said, grabbing Thoros by the shoulder.

He turned and looked at his father in bewilderment.

“Go on,” his father said. “They’ll feed you.” He turned and started walking down the street, his ewe following dutifully after him.

“Either you walk in on your own two feet or I’ll have one of the soldiers carry you, and trust me, he will be very annoyed. He might just break an ankle or two along the way,” the woman said in a low voice. Thoros shivered and moved to follow her. He never saw his father again.

They branded him that same day, with a white hot poker in the fleshy part of his wrist.

He screamed in pain, and Diony shifted about a thousand times in a minute to try and escape the excruciating agony. And the smell, the smell of his own charred flesh. When they finally turned him loose, Thoros sobbed, clutching his arm between his knees.

The woman watched him dispassionately. 

“I would say your daemon changes more than middling,” she said finally, as Thoros tried to wipe the snot and tears from his face with his good hand.

“What’d you care?” He’d spat, possibly the first words he’d said to her.

“In children, a more changeable daemon is indicative of innate intelligence,” the woman said calmly. “A factor when we sort you.”

~~~~

As a child in the temple, Diony took the form of dogs. That’s what the soldiers all had, and more than anything, Thoros wanted to be sorted as a solider.

In the temple, there were only three career paths. You could be a solider or a priest or a prostitute. Almost all of the girls and the prettier boys were chosen for the latter. Thoros probably would have been safe (Diony liked to joke that he had a face only his daemon could love), but because red hair was less common, he broke his nose three times before he was thirteen. Once in a fight he’d picked with an older boy and twice by hitting himself in the face with a pan. He picked a lot of fights anyway, to ensure he was always missing a tooth or sporting a black eye when the sorters came through. When it came to the sorting, he wasn’t taking any chances.

He should have been sorted early. He was great at fighting. Seven older siblings had taught him to fight every fight like your life depended on it. When you hadn’t eaten in three or four days, sometimes it did.

So give him a sword or a mace or a fucking net and trident—he was best in his age group and could take a lot of the older guys. He’d ensured he was ugly enough and with a bad enough reputation that he’d never be in the temple brothels unless it was as a patron. But they hadn’t sorted him yet. It was a fucking joke.

“It’s because you ask too many questions,” Diony said, panting from where she was laying in the shade. She had taken the form of some glossy black and brown dog with a pointy muzzle and sharp eyes. “Soldiers don’t stop and ask why, they just do what they’re ordered.”

“What if the orders are stupid?” Thoros said sullenly, trying change a bandage on an older wound that had reopened during training. He half wondered if it was because Diony always took the form of strange and exotic dogs, like the hunting dogs the magisters’ had, instead of a regular mutt like most of the soldiers.

“You do them anyway,” Diony said flatly, and then got up and padded over. She rested her chin on his knee.

“You like my forms,” she said. And then she started licking the old cut, and between licks she told him a story about a place where people weren’t sorted at all and they were whatever they wanted to be.

~~~~

The night Thoros first had an inkling that the temple was evil, Diony had been an otter.

“Shhhh,” a hand was clapped over his mouth and Thoros jerked, fighting instantly. “Shhhh, it’s me,” the decidedly female voice came. Thoros relaxed slightly.

It was Neena, who had flaxen pigtails and muddy brown eyes and a gap between her front teeth. She laughed too loudly and had a spray of freckles across her nose and Thoros loved her with an ache that was breathtaking in its intensity because she was a misfit just like him.

“What’s up?” He whispered. “Kitchen raid?”

All around him, boys from five to fifteen were sleeping, but that didn’t seem to bother Neena. In the moonlight, he thought she looked especially pretty, for all that her face was uncharacteristically downcast. Her daemon, Romo, normally a wildcat, was a mouse.

“Not this time,” Neena said, and clambered into his bed. There wasn’t much room for both of them, but he rolled on his side to give her what space he could. They lay side by side, noses almost touching, and he could see Romo’s black eyes peeking out from the collar of her tunic.

“I came to say goodbye,” Neena said. 

“Where you going, Quarth?” Thoros grinned. Because they were temple property, and the idea of just leaving was a joke.

Neena did not smile back.

“They found my rags from last week. They know I’ve been lying about not getting my moon blood. They’ll sort me into the brothel first thing tomorrow if I don’t leave.”

Thoros swallowed.

“It’ll be worse for you if they have to hunt you down and bring you back. They’ll tear you a new one,” he said quietly. 

“That’s why I need your help,” Neena suddenly took his hand, lacing their fingers together. He looked down somewhat stupidly.

“I’m valuable because I’m a virgin,” Neena said bluntly. “They won’t try to look for me as hard if they know I’m damaged goods.”

“Oh,” Thoros said uncertainly. 

“Thoros, I can’t be a virgin anymore,” Neena explained slowly. Thoros felt a frisson of shock and looked to see that Romo had taken the form of an otter to mimic Diony. He had slid against her, nuzzling her neck. Diony bared her teeth back, but it was playful.

“Oh?” Thoros managed to squeak.

“I thought you’d want to. And I guess in another place I would have wanted it to be you,” Neena said shyly. Then she kissed him tentatively. When she stopped, Thoros kissed her back.

It was awkward and fumbling, and Neena had to do the bulk of the work. He took her tunic off and she lowered herself down on him and he gasped as he felt himself sliding into her heat. She rocked a little bit and he gasped again. He remembered turning his head and seeing the otters playing in the moonlight, darting in and out of shadows to wrestle silently. Neena rolled her hips, and he gasped a third time and felt like he was falling off the edge of a cliff of no return. That moment of utterly glorious free fall—the way she smiled gap-toothed down at him, the otters tumbling through bars of light and shadow, the bliss of relief—it was frozen in time, a small crystallized moment of happiness that was only hers and his.

After, he held her and whispered plans to her. They would leave together, her and him, at dawn. They would stowaway on a ship to Braavos. There were no slaves in Braavos. She would sell fruit at the market and he would work as a sell sword and there would always be enough to eat. 

When he woke in the morning, she was gone. Someone in his bunk room ratted him out to the priests, and they found his sheets, bloody. They tied him to the whipping post and gave him twenty lashes. That was a lot, but not the most he’d ever taken, and the soldiers doling it out didn’t take it seriously, elbowing each other and laughing and promising to get him actually laid with a pro once he was sorted. The real punishment was being left tied there in the heat. Thoros could feel his back burning, open wounds and all, and he was nearly out of his mind with boredom when they brought her back in a cart.

She was dead, her warm brown eyes now lifeless and vacant, staring at a sky she would never see again. She had drowned herself rather than let them take her alive, had jumped into a canal knowing she couldn’t swim. Romo was gone of course, vanished into so much golden Dust. And Thoros realized he was not like her, for all that they were both misfits. He was a survivor. He was not built to die for what he believed. That’s what he thought anyway.

Diony never took the form of an otter again.

~~~~

Diony settled when he was sixteen, two days after his life well and truly unraveled.

It was some stupid story from prayer that had caught his imagination, the blood of the faithful igniting their swords with R’hllor’s glory.

He tried it at swords, more for show, because it was kind of badass to drag your blade across your palm like you didn’t feel the sting. Then the whole sword went up with a whoosh, and all across the courtyard, everybody went silent. Thoros stared at the burning sword in his hand and he knew he was fucked.

They sorted him into the priesthood the same day. They made him run endless tests. But that was all he could do, the stupid flaming sword thing. There were no other miracles that could be squeezed from his doubting heart.

All the same, they move him out of the boys’ dorm, and give him his own very tiny cell in the priests’ quarters. There was barely room for a bed and a bucket, but it was the first time Thoros had a place to call his own.

“What do you think it means?” He asked Diony dully, staring at the red line across his palm.

“That you’re a moron,” Diony replied tartly. “You’ll never be a soldier now. More fools them. You’ll be the worst priest in the world.”

“I know,” Thoros admitted.

“Why’d you do it anyway?!” Diony demanded, placing a paw on his leg. She didn’t need to pretend to be a dog anymore, but they both were sad to let go of that dream. Thoros would have been happy as a sell sword on loan from the red temple, he thought. He would have been happy fighting far from the watchful eye of his god.

“I didn’t think it would work. Why DID it work?”

“Why are you asking me?” Diony glared back.

“You’re my daemon! Aren’t you supposed to know this stuff?”

But Diony only huffed and turned in a circle and then went to sleep.

Thoros spent hours that night staring at the line across his palm. He hadn’t felt anything in the moment—no surge of warmth or otherworldly presence. Why had R’hllor stepped in to answer some urchin’s half-baked prayer? It didn’t make any sense.

Once he was a priest, his schooling was doubled. All of the priests seemed to have birds as daemons. Thoros remembered looking up that first miserable day of classes, watching as the other priests’ daemons flew in a whirling cyclone of feathers, as if the heady ideas and theology on debate were the wind under their wings. 

There was a pop behind him. Thoros turned back lazily to see that Diony had taken the form of a black bear. Stolid and large and completely flightless. Diony cocked her head up at all those winged daemons and sneered. Thoros leaned his face into the palm of his hand to conceal smirk.

“Okay, joke’s over,” he yawned that night as he returned to his closet-sized room. He settled down on the bed, and when Diony didn’t immediately land on his chest as a cat or a small dog, he cracked an eye.

She stood looking at him in the doorway, still a black bear.

“... I can’t,” she said finally. “This is it. My shape.”

Thoros struggles into a sitting position, staring at the enormous bear.

“You’re so inconvenient,” he huffed. She only rolled her eyes and clumsily clambered onto the bed with him, the mattress groaning under he weight.

“It’s your fault,” she snarked. “It’s your soul.”

Thoros shifted uncomfortably, trying to get away from the stifling heat of her fur. There was a crack as the bed collapsed.

~~~

Black bears were not native to Essos. They were native to Westeros. Though she was ridiculously large for a daemon, she was actually on the smaller side for a true black bear. Black bears were lazy and opportunistic scavengers that could and did eat anything. Thoros wondered if childhood deprivation had played some role in creating a daemon that basically spent all her time eating, sleeping and fighting.

She was a good climber and a savage opponent in this form. He still attended the trainings with the soldiers when he had free time, and most of them were game to try their luck against a beast they’d only heard sailors’ tales about. All of the red temple soldiers were trained to fight with their daemons, inured to the ripple of unpleasant feedback you got when your daemon gouged someone’s back or took a sword in its side.

The priests were trained to stretch their bond. Their daemons could fly messages from one end of Essos to the other. Thoros had to learn that too, though it seemed like pointless pain given his situation. There was a lot of that in the red temple.

“Keep going,” he said with gritted teeth as Diony tried to claw her way down the corridor.

She growled, a low rumbling, and Thoros knew his cheeks were wet.

“If that cunt of a high priest’s peacock can do this, so can we,” Thoros bit out.

“Fuck him, and FUCK YOU!” Diony roared as she made it around the bend. A second later, he had his arms around her, both of them shaking with the anguish and the giddy triumph of their new personal record.

The stretching was coming okay. Sometimes he saw things in the fire, strange visions of forests and rivers that didn’t make any sense because Myr had hacked up her forests into timber long ago, but that was better than half the priests ever got. And his flaming sword trick was a reliable favorite with the drunks at the pubs where he preached. He quickly learned that the temple elders didn’t care where he spread the good word so long as he kept his disgraceful embarrassment of a self far from their line of vision. So Thoros took it upon himself to preach at the wharves in the morning where he could watch the goods being unloaded from all over the world and pick up the eight or nine languages that were always floating about. Lunch was at the market, then he spent the afternoon preaching in the slums. Nights were for preaching at bars or brothels, and it was about once a month that the guards had to be sent to fetch him, so carried away was he with his good work.

He was too old for the whipping post now, and priests didn’t get whipped anyway. He realized he was quickly becoming a consternation to the temple—delivering sermons drunk and pissing your robes in public will do that—and he took a grim pleasure in knowing that they regretted not making him a soldier and being done with it.

He remembered one night in particular, two soldiers hauling his drunk ass back to the temple, throwing him in his stupid cell to sleep it off. The moon was coming in through the slats in the wall and it reminded him of some other night—what other night?

“We’re better than this,” Diony said, licking his ear. 

“Go ‘way,” Thoros mumbled, rolling in the bed so his back was to her.

“There’s a place for us out there. Where nobody has to preach anything they don’t believe,” Diony said in her warm bear voice. 

“I’m too old for your fairy tales,” Thoros said grouchily, already imagining his hangover the next morning.

“It’s not a fairy tale,” Diony said stubbornly. “It’s true. We just haven’t found it yet.”

“And we never will,” Thoros snarked, his right thumb finding the brand in his left wrist. The temple loaned out soldiers, never priests. And he was the exact opposite of who would be chosen for a diplomatic mission.

At least, that’s what he thought.

~~~~

The priests all sat at the high table in the great hall, in a complicated order determined by seniority and your favor with the high priest. Needless to say, Thoros sat at the very end, far from the high priest in the center.

That was why he noticed when he could hear the high priest talking to the red temple’s envoy from King’s Landing. The envoy was Volantene of course—the main temple was there and all the noteworthy diplomats had the characteristic Volantene face tattoos. The brand might hurt but at least it wasn’t on his fucking face, Thoros thought and behind him Diony gave a soft exhale of agreement.

The Volantene priest clearly thought he was hot shit, talking loudly, pleased to be entertaining these colonials. (Myr had been conquered by Volantis once and ruled as a colony for a hundred years. They threw off the yoke eventually, but Volantenes still acted like Myrmen and Lysenes were but poor copies of the original Volantene mold.)

“A rebellion they’re calling it! Ha! The Targaryen dynasty has ruled for four hundred years. And what does the rebellion offer? A man who can claim a Targaryen grandmother? Not even a man! A boy!” The envoy spat.

The Myrrish high priest seemed to find the envoy vaguely amusing. That was Thoros’ read anyway. He hated the man, but he was smart in a sly way. That had to be why he continued winding up the envoy—some subtle joke lost on Thoros whose humor tended toward the bawdy.

“Surely,” the high priest said mildly, and his peacock tilted her royal blue head. “Surely it behooves the great temple to send a delegate to this would-be-king? Have a leg in both camps? If we were to convert this boy usurper, and he were to win, think of the victory for the red temple.”

“Another boy usurper and I would grant you your reasoning,” the envoy laughed. “But it is clear that tales of Robert Baratheon the so-called Stag King have not reached the backwaters of Myr.”

The high priest did not react to this casual slight, but his peacock spread his feathers in haughty disdain. Fortunately, the envoy was one of those snooty types who thought it uncouth to look at another man’s daemon. (Thoros never understood that—daemons usually had far more blatant tells than their humans.)

“Is the Stag King ungodly?” The high priest asked politely.

“Ha! He is called the Stag King for his family’s emblem, but in truth it stuck because he is only good for fighting and rutting!”

“He is young and the Seven is a corrupt and twisted faith. Perhaps a natural reaction to unholiness that can be gently corrected through sermons...”

“What sermons?! He spends his free time drinking. The man who can keep up with him has yet to be born.”

“You have so little faith,” the high priest smirked.

“Oh,” Diony breathed, flattening her ears. She did that when she wanted to look smaller. Thoros often wondered why she bothered. It’s not like a bear was inconspicuous.

“Look sharp, this is our chance,” Diony growled. Thoros was trying to get the last bit of ale from his mug, holding it above his face.

“Eh?” Thoros mumbled.

“Thoros!” The high priest barely had to raise his voice, so quiet had the table gone at his exchange with the Volantene envoy. “Come join us. I want to get your opinion on something.”

“I told you that you needed to wash your robes,” Diony whispered. 

Thoros blinked down at his mud caked clothes. At least it wasn’t vomit. All things considered, he was getting off lucky.

The envoy did not see it that way, nearly recoiling as he took in Thoros’ slovenly appearance. His robes were in disrepair, his top-knot valiantly fighting to escape its cord, his eyes bloodshot and his breath smelling strongly of booze.

“Yes, sit down right there,” the high priest gestured at a currently occupied seat. The occupant huffed down to Thoros’ old seat and Thoros mentally added him to his list of people who hated him.

Diony edged awkwardly between the tables, sending chairs and plates clattering. Finally she got close enough to swipe him if he said something rude. The Volantene envoy’s daemon, a puffed up little parakeet, squawked nervously at her approach. 

“Another mug of ale for Thoros,” the high priest waived to a server benevolently.

“You were saying that this heathen is young, that all he cares for are whoring and drinking and fighting. That he will not listen to any of our usual envoys. That’s quite the problem, isn’t it Thoros?”

“Yes,” Thoros muttered sullenly, not enjoying being reduced to a bobble-headed puppet in whatever game the high priest was playing.

“What would you do?” The high priest asked, right as Thoros drained his new mug of ale. Because he hadn’t been expecting a follow up question, he had bought himself a moment or two to respond.

“Find an unusual envoy, I guess,” he thunked the now-empty tankard on the table before him.

The high priest looked at the Volantene with the smirk a cyvasse player who has just check-mated two opponents simultaneously in two entirely different games.

“Him?!” The envoy spluttered. “You can’t be serious.”

“Deadly,” the high priest gave a crocodile smile.

Behind Thoros, Diony suddenly rested her chin on his shoulder and the possibilities of this moment hit him. Because the high priest wanted him gone and he wanted to be gone and between the both of them, this envoy didn’t stand a chance.

“He doesn’t speak the language,” the man protested.

“I’m fluent,” Thoros corrected politely in Common. A language often spoken at the docks and taverns he frequented.

The envoy glared at him.

“And does this... specimen... have the training, the requisite knowledge?!”

“Based on your description of the usurper, that would matter very little. He sounds like a simple mind more impressed by flash than substance. Thoros, show him your little sword trick,” the high priest said patronizingly.

Thoros smirked. If his contribution to this conversation was playing the role of performing monkey, so be it. This was his ticket out. He drew his sword easily and ran his palm over the bladed edge. As it always had, the sword ignited in a roar of flame. The envoy’s daemon fled to the rafters in flap of feathers.

“Impressive,” the envoy gulped, a bead of sweat materializing at his hairline.

“Not something you see every day. I believe R’hllor has called you to our table, dear friend,” the high priest coaxed his face from triumph into something like piety. “He has come with a mission for dear Thoros.”

“I don’t think you understand,” the envoy gave a last ditch effort to unwind this. “The usurper is doomed to failure. Not even his own lords in the Stormlands support him. He hides in the Vale with his foster father. To go is a death sentence.”

“I have seen the usurper’s victory in the flames,” the high priest said serenely. Thoros highly doubted that. “Trust in R’hllor that he will protect his chosen. You trust in R’hllor, don’t you Thoros?”

“I do,” Thoros lied with a song in his heart.

~~~~

“How does the temple send a delegate to a rebel stormlord who is almost certainly doomed to failure without pissing off the rightful and completely psychotic king?” Thoros asked, trying to watch the horizon as the deck of the Ibbenese whaler beneath him pitched. 

“Very carefully,” Diony rolled her eyes, and then proceeded to throw up the raw seal blubber she had consumed some hours earlier.

The answer was with no fanfare, little money, no introductions and no tactical support. If he was caught in the camp of this Robert Baratheon, the temple could plausibly claim him as some crazed renegade driven by his own mad readings of the flames.

Thoros was sorely tempted to just fuck off at the first port they stopped at. Unfortunately, that port happened to be Gulltown.

He had heard of the great port city of the Vale, and was not prepared for the smoking ruin that greeted his ship.

He could feel the anxiety of the Ibbenenese crew, as they muttered together, their puffin daemons wheeling in the sky to get a better look. He knew they had to land—the ship had been leaking for days—but he did not blame them for their unease.

The boat had not bumped against a dock when the soldiers were there, waiting. Most wore the blue of the Vale—Thoros had spent the voyage reading and rereading a mind-numbing tomb about the history of Westeros. But Gulltown was Vale and they had burned it. Did they fight for Lord Arryn or the crown?

“What is your business?” The leader of their welcome committee barked. As one, the Ibbenese crew all looked at Thoros. Cravens. 

“A trading and whaling vessel, in dire need of repair,” Thoros said soothingly.

The commander refused to be soothed, pointing his sword at Thoros’ chest.

“You then. Ibbenders don’t follow no fire god.”

Thoros really wished he had any other clothes besides his red robes. Behind him, Diony padded to his side, still trying to look nonthreatening. The dogs that circled the soldiers growled.

Thoros took a deep breath and then gambled with the words that would seal his fate.

“I’ve got a message for Robert Baratheon.”

Robert Baratheon, the famous stag king, was in a tavern. He was escorted (frog-marched) to his future by the hospitable guards from the docks. Robert was quite tall and broad-shouldered with black hair and dark blue eyes. His antlered crown was askew, and he had not bothered to change from his blood soiled leathers. He was laughing uproariously at some joke, a serving maid on his knee and his hand resting possessive on her hip.

Thoros had preached in taverns plenty of times. But he’d never converted anyone, to his knowledge, and it seemed quite unfair to have to do so now when he would be gutted on a spear if he failed.

“Do you know what you’re going to say?” Diony whispered nervously. “Don’t try to quote scripture, you always get confused and fuck it up.”

Thoros found his fingers wrapping in her coarse black fur for comfort.

“Your grace!” The solider in charge dropped to one knee. “We’ve caught a spy!”

“Hey! I’m not a spy!” Thoros snapped angrily and kicked him in the head where he kneeled. Caught by surprise, the soldier toppled over with a yelp of indignation.

Robert Baratheon, who had looked initially annoyed now erupted into laughter.

“What are you if you’re not a spy?” He grinned at Thoros. Thoros smiled uncertainly back. From behind Robert, an enormous reindeer lifted her head from where she had been quietly chewing her cud.

Maybe because Robert’s daemon was also ridiculously large, or because they both had daemons that would have lived quite happily north of the wall, or because Robert’s daemon didn’t seem afraid of Diony in the slightest, Thoros relaxed a touch.

“I’m a priest,” he said firmly. “My name is Thoros of Myr and the red temple sent me to tell you that R’hllor has decreed your victory. It is foretold.”

“Oh he foretold it, did he?” Robert raised an eyebrow. “Did he send men? Ships? Horses? Swords?” 

“Just me,” Thoros admitted.

“Well thank the Red Rahloo for me,” Robert turned back to his drink and his pretty serving girl.

“Losing him,” Diony hissed in his ear unnecessarily. Thoros scowled.

“Do something about that why don’t you?” He snarked back, already putting his hand on his sword hilt.

Diony lifted to her full eight foot height and roared. Robert looked up from his drink. His daemon, which had been completely disinterested the entire time now stopped chewing and stared at Diony, eyes suddenly bright.

“R’hllor’s power is not to be discounted,” Thoros ground out. Personally he, like Robert, would have preferred ships and horses, but the casual dismissal irritated him and for once he was in a position to do something about it. “It was his power that Azhor Azhai channeled when he single-handedly saved the world from the long night,” he unsheathed his sword even as he cut it against his palm, one fluid motion that had the blade instantaneously wreathed in flames.

The soldiers around him immediately backed away, for all that their duty was to protect their ersatz king. Thoros glared at Robert, refusing to back down.

“So he did send me a sword,” Robert slowly set his mug down. “You ever fought with that thing or is it just for children’s name day parties?”

Thoros fought the urge to be the first priest to murder the man they were supposed to be converting.

“Reckon I fight better than those dancing steps they teach you at little lord school,” Thoros taunted back instead.

Robert gave a bark of surprised laughter.

“Everyone knows priests are full of hot air, but you might be the first to die of it. Let’s go outside.”

“You’re not going to talk me out of this?” Thoros asked Diony in an undertone as he followed Robert out to the dirt road. 

“No,” Diony growled. “Kick his ass.”

Thoros stood stolidly, his flaming sword at the ready.

“I’d use my war hammer but it seems sacrilegious to bash a priest’s head in,” Robert smirked, cracking his neck. “You, give me your sword.” A nearby squire hastened to obey.

Thoros noted the ease with which he held it, the strange side stance he took. Dancing lessons, he scoffed to himself again.

Robert immediately and predictably charged. Thoros parried his strike—they were evenly matched for weight and height, and Robert grunted, not used to being unable to overpower his opponents. Moreover, the intense heat from Thoros’ blade meant it was Robert who had to give way, skipping backward to avoid a counterattack. Thoros followed after lazily, striking just quickly enough to keep Robert off balance. The flames made it difficult to tell where the blade was going to land, and after barely blocking the first few swings, Robert took to dodging them instead. 

“Such fine footwork, your grace, perhaps you were better suited as a lady at a ball,” Thoros taunted again. He knew he had struck a nerve for Robert’s face reddened, but he continued to duck and weave, only launching the occasional lunging strike. Thoros grimly followed after, determined to at least disarm him and teach him some manners. His moment came when Robert’s arm dropped—fatigue perhaps? A strangely beginner mistake for someone who had clearly been well trained—and Thoros lunged forward.

Immediately Robert spun, hauling on a cord behind him that Thoros had missed. A huge cistern of water above abruptly emptied its contents on their heads, and Thoros was forced to shield his eyes or get months old rain water slopped in his face.

When he opened them, his sword had been nearly extinguished, giving one last pathetic sputter before going out.

“Yield,” Robert Baratheon grinned, his sword resting at Thoros’s throat. From behind him, Diony growled, her teeth inches from the stag king’s neck. Robert turned in surprise, his sword still pricking Thoros where his collarbone dipped.

“You’d kill me with your daemon?!” Robert managed, part admiringly part annoyed. “I think you’re the best priest I ever saw.”

“And you haven’t even seen me drink,” Thoros gave back.

~~~~

Thoros served in Robert’s honor guard during the three year war that came to be known as Robert’s Rebellion. He made a few feeble efforts to bring up religion, usually when he was half in his cups, but the only gods Robert worshipped were fighting, fucking and booze. Thoros sometimes wondered who was converting who. (“You were doing all three long before you met Robert,” Diony would huff.)

But for all that Diony disapproved, she rather liked Robert and his daemon Nella. They were all going to die anyway, so oh well, what the hell, as Nella liked to say.

Thoros killed his first man at Summerhall, shortly followed by another and another, their daemons dissolving into golden dust, their blood mixing with the dirt at his feet. He had no time to ponder how hard it is to get a sword out of a man’s rib cage once inserted, or the horrifying gurgles a boy makes when you cut his throat. It was a desperate dirty fight for survival, and then another and then another.

Diony fought beside him, and Nella beyond that, charging low with her antlers and tossing soldiers from their mounts. Diony lost an ear at some point—a phantom pain that lanced through his brain—but no sooner had they defeated one army than a second had showed up on the horizon.

He remembered strange things, like the twisted spires of melted rock whose shadows they fought in. The whistle of Robert’s war hammer through the air. How slick the dirt became, how you could barely step for the corpses. And then, Nella’s black laughter as a third army crested the hill.

That day more than anything cemented Robert’s legend. Three battles in one day, three victories, by a young untested general. He killed the leader of the third wave, Lord Fell, in single combat. As he had Marqus Grafton at Gulltown. People would sing songs about Summerhall. And it was there that Robert became more than just a man. He became an idea, the kind of idea that men would die for. It was there at Summerhall that Thoros realized he would win.

“You don’t know that,” Diony frowned, scratching at the bandage Thoros had done for her.

“Leave it,” he swatted her paw away. “I do so. I’ve seen it in the flames,” he grinned, echoing the high priest’s long ago lie.”

“All you see are forests and rivers and a cave,” she corrected him acerbically. “I still say it’s indigestion. After today? You can’t think there’s any god out there who loves us.”

“How do you explain the sword then?” Thoros said tiredly. Sometimes he thought it was little wonder he was such a bad priest when his own daemon was such a heretic.

“There were wizards in Myr. Warlocks in Quarth. Witches in the Dothraki sea. None of them worship R’hllor. Maybe it’s innate,” Diony said thoughtfully.

Thoros looked at his palm doubtfully, badly scarred as it was by the many times he’d drawn blood. He’d never felt anything, from within or without. 

“THOROS!” Robert staggered up and threw an arm over his shoulder. “Let’s get drunk!”

Nella still had an arrow sticking out of her haunch, but she butted Diony gently with her antlers.

Three years will pass quickly when you’re at the bottom of a bottle.

The battles all blurred. Defeats and victories, they both tasted like rum in the end. Sometimes Thoros parsed those memories, wondering if he’d seen him, if their paths had crossed. He would have been what, fourteen, fifteen? A Stormlands squire, blond, tall for his age though slender. Sometimes Thoros thought he did, at the Trident maybe, face dirty and a little dazed. Sometimes he thought it was his imagination—that he just wanted to believe their paths had always been intertwined.

Then marching in to King’s Landing at the back of Robert’s guard, as the small folk threw flowers and cheered. If victory tasted like rum, it looked like two tiny bodies wrapped in crimson Lannister banners, the darker blood stains almost but not quite hidden. Thoros had looked up at the vast walls of the Red Keep around them. It felt like the maw of a monster, that they were marching to their deaths. He wondered if some day he would be looking at Robert’s body wrapped in crimson Lannister banners. He wondered if some day it would be his.

“No fairy tales for me?” He asked Diony drily, trying not to look directly at the children.

“You’re too old for stories, remember?” Diony said, as she stared at them.

~~~~

In his darker moments, Thoros thought he had simply exchanged one master for another, and then his right thumb found the old brand on his left wrist and pressed down hard.

But serving a king was easier than serving a god, his whims and vagaries infinitely less mysterious. And serving a king was how Thoros met Lord Beric Dondarrion.

The King (not Robert, Thoros tried not to think of him as the young man whose boundless courage and appetite for life had sprung from an intense conviction that he was probably about to die), the King had taken his court to the Stormlands for a tournament. Thoros no longer rode in his guard—the King had real knights for that—but rode with him anyway for he reminded the King of a simpler time.

As a jest, the King had signed him up for the joust in addition to the melee. Just an excuse to laugh as his friend got deposited on his ass by some fancy nobleman on his fancy horse. Thoros had laughed but inwardly ground his teeth. Jousting had to be the stupidest entertainment Westeros had to offer.

“Are you sure you should finish that?” Diony tried to bat his wineskin from his hand and he danced away.

“Why not? A drunken fool is funnier than a sober one,” Thoros tipped it to his mouth again.

“You’ve had too much. You’ll be lucky if you can keep your lance up.”

“Never have trouble keeping my lance up,” Thoros hiccuped, waggling his eyebrows. Diony shoved him and he toppled backwards onto his ass.

“You’re funny,” he said sarcastically, trying to figure out which of the three or four daemons he was seeing to glare at. “You know what your problem is?”

“I only have one,” Diony sniffed.

“We’re both dancing bears. I’m just the one who knows it.”

“You’re better than this,” Diony got into his face, her now battle-battered visage staring at him earnestly.

“I disagree,” Thoros said wearily. “Which horse is mine?”

When he rode up to the post, he could hear the crowd roaring for his opponent, wearing black armor with a fancy billowing cape of purple and silver stars. His kestrel daemon was wheeling in the sky above. Thoros glanced down at his own attire, the armor cobbled from Robert’s spares. The knight across from him saluted him with the lance. Thoros glanced at his own dubiously, fairly sure (regardless of what he might say to Diony) that if he lifted it out of position he would never get it into the right spot again. He settled for waving back with one hand before quickly readjusting it.

The herald blew his horn and Thoros sighed and kicked his mount dispiritedly. As if real fights happened on the list one on one, while ladies fluttered their favors.

He gave his best imitation of a knight jousting, leaning forward slightly. For a wild moment it seemed to work, as he crashed by his opponent and the lances struck and his shield shattered even as his opponent was unhorsed entirely. The crowd roared again, whether in excitement or anger was unclear.

The knight in the starry cape got spryly to his feet, taking off his helmet. Dark blond hair and bright blue eyes and a smile sunny enough to pierce even the fog of Thoros’ drunken stupor.

“Well struck ser,” he walked over to shake Thoros’ hand where he sat still on his horse.

“I’m not a ser,” Thoros said slowly. “And it was not well struck. I think you let me win.”

“Did I?” The young man—for he looked late teens to Thoros’ late twenties—said politely, neither an admission or denial. And then he was gone, back to collect his horse and yield the field.

“He did,” Thoros muttered to Diony, who had been leaning on the rail to watch. He couldn’t help but scan the crowd to see which way starry-cape had gone.

“I know,” Diony gave back frowning.

Naturally Thoros’ next opponent was less accommodating, and the King got his hilarious spill after all, Thoros flying several feet off his mount and landing on his back with a groan. Any thoughts about the man from the first round were promptly scattered amidst the every day mundanities of finding a way out of his ill-fitting armor, getting back to his tent, putting some salve on the bruises he didn’t like the looks of. Then he treated himself to a long dreamless sleep.

It wasn’t until that evening, clad once more in his faded red cloak and significantly more sober, that Thoros thought of starry-cape again. It was inescapable really, because as he worked his way through a crowded tavern, he saw that starry-cape was sitting at the only table with a free seat.

“So why’d you let me win?” Thoros sat down without bothering to ask if the stranger wanted company. The man looked up from the dinner he’d been persevering through—a rather sad looking filet and some wilted greens.

“You had clearly never never jousted before. And you were drunk. There was no honor to be gained in unseating you.”

“Some money though,” Thoros shrugged.

“I’d rather have the honor.”

“Spoken like someone with money,” Thoros teased. “But I’m grateful all the same. Can I buy you a drink?”

Oddly, his new friend blushed, and his daemon, who had thus far been occupied pecking at his plate, looked up with a fierce yellow glare.

“You don’t have to sit with me you know,” starry-cape stammered. “Anyone here would welcome a friend of the King at their table.”

“Have I offended you?” Thoros frowned, wondering if he’d stuck his foot into some kind of cultural nuance that didn’t exist in Myr. Eight years here and he was still trying to understand the Westerosi.

“No!” His companion blurted. “I just... people don’t... people find me rather dull company, I’m afraid. And you’re from Essos! Aside from the war, I’ve never been outside the Stormlands. I would hate to bore you.”

“You seem to know my life story,” Thoros laughed. “You have me at the disadvantage once again.”

“Oh! I’m so sorry. I’m Beric Dondarrion,” Beric Dondarrion stuck out his hand. His kestrel had hopped onto his shoulder, inspecting Thoros with a tilted head. It was very pretty, for all that it was a predator.

“Thoros,” Thoros shook Beric’s hand and flagged a server for some ale.

“Of Myr,” Beric added.

“Aye, of Myr,” Thoros laughed. The server brought a tray over and he grabbed two glasses.

“So tell me, Beric Dondarrion,” he put one mug in front of Beric and one in front of himself. “You knew I was no ser. Why did you address me thus on the lists?”

“It seemed polite,” Beric shrugged.

“Honorable and polite? You must have to fight the ladies off with a stick!” Thoros teased.

Beric blushed again, and his kestrel fidgeted.

“Not really,” Beric said quietly.

“Unlucky in love?” Thoros sighed dramatically. “I’ll toast to that.” He clinked his glass with Beric’s, determined that his quiet new friend would have at least one night of good fun. It was the least he could do.

Several hours later, they staggered back through the tents, Beric’s arm over his shoulders. His daemon, Ky, as Thoros now knew her, was faring no better. After she tumbled from the air for the second time, Diony picked her up in one big paw and set her on her shoulder.

“Why do they all look the same?” Beric said dazedly, staring around the camp grounds in bewilderment.

“Do you remember what color yours was at least?”

“Purple!”

“That’s a start.”

“Or silver!”

“Um...”

“Black maybe?”

“So that’s a no,” Thoros shook his head, concealing a smile.

“Yes?”

“Okay, you can stay in my tent until the morning. Something tells me you might fare better with a clearer head.” 

“My head’s clear,” Beric laid the head in question on Thoros’ shoulder.

“Yeah?” Thoros ruffled his hair. He spotted his tent in the distance and adjusted course.

“Mmmhmmm,” Beric nodded into his collar bone.

“It’s not,” Ky said behind them in a low whisper to Diony.

Thoros got them to his tent and kicked the flap open with his foot.

“So you can have the bed,” Thoros began. Beric promptly flopped face first into the bed. Thoros smirked and then knelt to take off his boots. 

“Stop!” Beric protested once Thoros had finally gotten the first off with no help from his inebriated guest. “Stop thief!”

Thoros wrestled the second off, only to feel Beric’s hand tangling in his hair.

“Ow?” Thoros tried to pry Beric’s fingers out of his top knot.

“What’re you doing way down there?” Beric mumbled. “Come up here with me.” He tugged.

Thoros winced and clambered to comply before Beric could pull anymore.

“Better,” Beric yawned when they were face to face, noses nearly brushing. 

“Don’t throw up,” Thoros said wryly. 

“I’m fine,” Beric threw his leg over Thoros.

“He’s not,” Ky whispered from where the kestrel was perched on Diony’s head.

The morning sun was bright, but not as much of an impediment to his continued slumber as the soldier prodding him with his shoe. Well, not him, Thoros realized. Prodding Beric, whose limbs were so intertwined with his that any movement essentially rippled through them both.

“Lord Dondarrion,” the soldier said apologetically. Thoros yawned and sat up. Lord?

“Nnngh,” Beric said and burrowed his head deeper into Thoros’ robes.

“Lord Dondarrion, you said you wanted to leave before noon to get back to Blackhaven,” the soldier poked him again. “I’ve been looking all over for you.” Lord?

Ky hopped onto the bed and proceeded to tweak Beric’s nose.

“Ky,” Beric whined plaintively, finally cracking an eye. Then he slowly took in his surroundings.

“Um...” Beric struggled out of bed, trying to smooth the wrinkles from his tunic. “Right. I’m sorry.” He nodded jerkily to his guard. “And... sorry,” he nodded again, this time to Thoros.

“You’re a lord?” Thoros grinned.

“No,” Beric said flustered, right as the guard said, “Yes.”

“My father recently passed, I think my mother would still be the lady,” Beric stammered.

“Never had a lord in my bed,” Thoros smirked.

“I was not—we didn’t—” Beric’s face burned red. He took a deep breath. “I am very sorry to have imposed on you. You were a most gracious host and please know that the halls of Blackhaven will be forever open to you.” 

Having finished his speech without further stammering or blushing, he nearly slumped in relief. Thoros took another look at him. He had an inch or two on Thoros, though he was lankier. Brilliant blue eyes and golden hair, like he had wandered out of Diony’s fairy tales. He was almost as pretty as his daemon.

“Thank you my lord,” Thoros said mildly, well aware of what HE looked like in the morning. 

“Right then,” Beric said, looking a tad disappointed.

“Right,” Thoros repeated.

“Well I should go,” Beric shifted his weight, but still he lingered.

“When are we leaving?” Thoros asked casually.

“What?” Beric’s head shot up.

“Well you said the halls of Blackhaven were open,” Thoros stretched. “No time like the present.”


	2. Chapter 2

Maybe the tourney was where their friendship was born. Or on the wild moors of Blackhaven, hunting and fishing for the two weeks that Thoros indulged the daydream that he was free.

The letter came a fortnight into his stay, from the King. Very jovial and very plainly a command to return to court.

He looked down a second too late to avoid seeing Beric’s face fall. He didn’t like to think that he was disappointing his new friend. Beric reminded him oddly of his childhood in the temple. It was funny because Beric had grown up with everything. But they had both grown up with walls. Thoros was always going to be a priest or a soldier and Beric was always going to be a lord. Beric had mentioned how unprepared he felt to step into recently departed father’s shoes. His mother was already sending ravens to other families in the Stormlands and Dorne, casually mentioning her eligible son. They were hosting a ball in a month—“I hate dancing,” Beric groused. “I don’t know how to dance,” Thoros shrugged. “Lucky,” Beric muttered—and he would be fending off eligible young things for months. He wasn’t ready to take the burden of his family legacy on his shoulders, but he didn’t have much of a choice.

“Maybe you can come visit,” Thoros offered, trying to keep the hope out of his voice. “There’s always a reason to come to King’s Landing.”

“Like what,” Beric said, not particularly trying to keep the hope out of his voice. 

“Like...” Thoros wracked his brain. “Like jousting. You have to redeem your reputation after all.”

“Aye,” Beric grinned, stepping a little closer into Thoros’ space. “I suppose I do.”

And he did. Lord Beric Dondarrion of Blackhaven became a regular on the Crownlands tourney circuit. He was very good, and the ladies did swoon over him, even if he was too shy to ever do anything about it. Thoros was trying to work on that though, that flinching voice in Beric’s head that told him he wasn’t worth the attention. Thoros didn’t like that voice.

He noticed it in Beric’s daemon too. Ky never spoke to him. It was normal of course, in polite society, for people and daemons not to address each other. Daemons talked to other daemons. You could talk to your own daemon, of course, but that was different. All the same, amongst good friends, the rules relaxed. But not for Beric and Ky.

Ky talked to Diony constantly, in a quiet murmur that Thoros could barely hear. 

“What do you talk about with her?” Thoros finally demanded, after Beric and Ky had walked off back to their inn.

“Who?” Diony was licking her paw.

“Ky!” Thoros said impatiently.

“Oh,” Diony looked up. “Ky’s not... never mind.”

“Well?”

“This and that,” Diony said airily. Thoros growled. He supposed that like Beric, Ky was just rigidly polite. If Ky had disliked him, the daemon wouldn’t have talked to Diony. But the two were thick as thieves, as inseparable as Beric and Thoros. (More so, for at the tournaments, when one was in the joust or the other the melee, the daemons would watch together, the falcon perched on the bear’s head.)

But Diony talked to Beric all the time, and he always answered easily. It didn’t seem like they found daemons talking to humans particularly taboo. 

The mystery was solved abruptly when they went hunting in the Kingswood. They had made camp for the night, and Thoros was cleaning a rabbit for Diony, who was watching hungrily.

“Does she want any?” Thoros looked up briefly at Ky wheeling high above them.

“Diony?” Beric asked absently.

“Ky,” Thoros squinted up, trying to make her out against the fading light.

“Oh. Um,” Beric seemed uncharacteristically uncomfortable. “Ky is a boy.”

“Oh,” Thoros said stupidly.

“Is that an issue? We can break camp in the morning, I can go,” Beric stammered.

“Don’t be silly,” Thoros waved his hand. Ky landed gracefully in his human’s shoulder, clearly sensing his distress.

“Ky, I thought you were a girl,” Thoros said. “I’m very sorry if I’ve offended you.”

“Of course not,” Ky said in a light tenor that was most assuredly male. Then he turned to Beric. “I told you he wouldn’t care.”

That explained why Ky never spoke unless drunk, and even then only in a whisper. Thoros felt badly that Beric took such pains to conceal the gender of his daemon, but he also understood his reasoning.

He flashed on a memory of the Baratheon brothers, standing in the courtyard with their daemons. Renly’s was a stag, with glorious beautiful antlers. Next to him, Robert’s reindeer was ugly and clumsy and Stannis’ hawk small and bedraggled.

“I wonder what our parents would say, if they knew I was the truest Baratheon,” Renly had posited impishly.

“I beg your pardon?” Stannis answered stiffly.

“Our daemons! I’m the only stag among us. Better luck next time, don’t be too jealous,” Renly had laughed and sauntered away. Thoros remembered seeing the dark look exchanged between the older brothers, Robert sneering and Stannis grimacing in silent reply.

Because of course, their daemons were female. Arguable Robert’s was as Baratheon as a normal daemon could get—reindeer were the only variant of that family where the females had antlers, even if Nella’s were not nearly as impressive as Renly’s stag.

A man to have a male daemon... well it meant he probably preferred the company of men. A soulmate amongst daemons was always of the opposite gender. Therefore a man with a male daemon was more likely to find his soul mate amongst the population with female daemons, ie other men.

Poor Beric. Thoros wondered if keeping this secret was what had initially made him so shy and uncomfortable with his peers. He understood now why the thought of marriage was of such disinterest to him. Having seen enough of Robert and Cersei’s marriage to not wish a loveless life on anyone, Thoros winced at the thought of Beric waking up every day next to someone he would never be able to love.

“Yeah that’s why you’d be sad,” Diony snarked, still eying the rabbit.

“What?” Thoros asked distractedly.

“Ugh never mind. Humans are so dense.”

Thoros rolled his eyes and stuck the rabbit on the spit over the fire.

From then on, Ky often spoke to him when it was just him and Beric. The issue was not Ky. The issue was definitely Diony.

He hadn’t noticed it before—maybe it hadn’t been as bad before—but their daemons did not interact as the daemons of normal friends should. The daemons of strangers did not touch. The daemons of enemies might display aggressive roughhousing—he had seen Cersei’s golden monkey running through Nella’s legs to try and trip her on several occasions, and had seen Nella once land a hard kick to the monkey’s head on another. The daemons of friends usually displayed incidental contact, some limited affectionate gestures. Diony and Ky were inseparable. If Ky landed, it was on Diony’s shoulder or her head, where Diony would affectionately pat him with her overgrown paw. Or if it was on a fence or table, Diony would amble over and nuzzle his feathers with her muzzle.

“Can you stop it?” He finally hissed under his breath at Diony. He was trying to watch Beric’s joust, and Diony was playing keep away with a fish and Ky.

Ky, as usual in crowds, only looked at him and preened to show he didn’t particularly care to be scolded.

Diony glared at Thoros and flipped the fish to Ky before padding over, her enormous bulk intended to intimidate.

“What’s the matter with you?” She growled, all teeth, her hot breath down his neck making him squirm. “You have some kind of aversion to being happy?”

He scowled right back. He had an aversion to Diony’s naive idealism plunging them into trouble. But this wasn’t the time or the place. That would be later that night, in their room in the Red Keep, when it was just the two of them.

“Don’t come running to me when Beric has to get married and stay at Blackhaven with his lady wife, and Ky has to spend his days watching a brood of little lords and ladies,” Thoros warned grimly.

“Renly Baratheon isn’t doing that. He’s off with Knight of Flowers,” Diony muttered, clambering onto the bed to be closer to him. He felt his hands automatically petting down her coarse black fur, soothing both of them.

“Both third born, both nobles. Beric is the last of his line, Diony, you know that. He has a duty to his house, to his people. And even if he didn’t, I’m a very unsuitable companion. People wouldn’t hesitate to talk behind our backs like they do about the Baratheons and the Tyrells.”

There was a long silence, and Thoros knew that Diony couldn’t refute the truth of what he was saying. He felt her massive head on his chest, weighing down every breath he took.

“Somewhere,” Diony began softly, “there is a place where you can love whomever you want.”

Thoros sighed, his fingers finding Diony’s poor scarred stump of an ear and rubbing it.

“But not here.”

~~~~

The turning point came when a miserable man named Balon Greyjoy badly miscalculated and raised his banners in rebellion.

Thoros saw the flashes of the old Robert then, the glimpses of a kingdom that could have been. For all the lords rallied to his side. Even Queen Cersei, before he left, pressed a favor into his hand, her monkey daemon timidly touching the velvet of Nella’s antlers. All of the Stormlords had gathered in King’s Landing, including of course, Beric. He looked nervous—his first war as a lord and not a squire. He would be serving with Lord Stannis, amongst the royal fleet sent to combat Victorian Greyjoy and his ships raiding the Reach.

“You’ll be fine,” Thoros tried to sound confident. They had retreated to Thoros’ chambers to share a bottle of wine before the fleet departed. “I’ll see you in the great castle of Pyke, and we’ll share another bottle.”

He leaned forward to refill Beric’s glass. Beric’s cheeks were flushed from the drink, his nerves badly needing respite.

“It feels different this time,” Beric admitted. “When I was in service to Lord Estermont, the whole thing felt like a grand adventure. Unreal somehow.”

“You have more to lose,” Thoros shrugged.

“Aye,” Beric said evenly, looking at Thoros with his brilliant blue gaze. “I do.”

Thoros blushed and looked down.

Their chairs were close together, their knees nearly touching, only the small sideboard with the bottle and some cheese between them. Diony abruptly put her head on the table, staring at the cheese. Beric laughed, picking up a slice and holding it out for her. She ate it off his hand, a curiously intimate gesture. But not nearly as intimate as what followed. 

Beric smiled at her affectionately and then scratched her head, finding the spot behind her ruined ear that she loved instinctively.

Thoros froze, the shiver of feedback down his spine breathtaking in its intensity.

You didn’t touch another person’s daemon, not unless they were family or a lover, and often not even then. A mother might touch her child’s daemon, but rarely did siblings. (Cersei and Jaime Lannister an odd exception—he had seen Cersei stroke Jaime’s lazy lioness once absent-mindedly. But they were twins. Perhaps it was different.) Likewise, even between lovers it was a gesture of rare closeness. Beric might as well have reached over and grabbed Thoros’ cock—that would have startled him less.

It was personal and intimate and unexpected and incredibly overwhelming. Even after Beric had withdrawn his hand and Diony had rumbled in disappointment, Thoros stared in shock. Beric could sense that he was upset.

“I’m sorry, I thought…”

“Get out,” Thoros said coldly, barely aware of the words dropping from his lips. “Please leave now.”

Beric stumbled to his feet.

“Thoros—“ Diony was frowning, up on all fours from her prior sitting position.

“Shut up,” Thoros snapped at his daemon. 

He didn’t see Beric again before Stannis ordered the fleet to disembark, although he couldn’t stop himself from picking out the ship Beric was on—the Lord Steffon.

“You’re a coward,” Diony rumbled behind him. It was the first words she had spoken to him since two days ago.

“Oh?” Thoros sneered.

“You pushed away your soulmate because you were scared,” Diony said accusingly.

“Beric isn’t my soulmate,” Thoros looked at her blankly. “Neena was my soulmate. Now she’s dead.”

“Thoros,” Diony sighed and rested her chin on his shoulder. “You were children. You barely knew each other. And you couldn’t have saved her. That doesn’t mean you should never try to love anybody again.”

“I can’t save Beric either,” Thoros said bluntly. 

“If you knew Neena was going to die, would you have refused her?” Diony said impatiently. “There’s no connection. Just because you and Beric don’t have forever together doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take the time you have.”

“If I hadn’t slept with Neena, it would have hurt less when she died,” Thoros said.

“Really?” Diony answered wearily. For that Thoros had no reply.

They heard about Lord Stannis’ great victory at Fair Isle, and he was part of the King’s forces that met the royal fleet at Lannisport in preparation for taking the Iron Islands themselves. Robert had naturally called Pyke, the capital, and Thoros was reflecting that perhaps Beric wasn’t the only one who was a little more nervous than their last go round.

He was sitting with his flask on a barrel, watching the ships come in. It reminded him a little of his early career preaching in Myr, though he couldn’t remember spending so much of his time trying to pick out each individual ship on the horizon. Finally, when when it seemed that no more were forthcoming, he grabbed Ser Davos Seaworth, who was talking with some of his men.

“The Lord Steffon,” Thoros said bluntly, without bothering with greetings. “Where is she?”

Davos’ daemon, a large pelican, stared at him balefully.

“Lost at sea,” Davos frowned. Thoros blinked, dumbstruck. Diony lifted onto her hind paws, and the men around them backed away nervously.

“Excuse me?” Thoros finally managed.

“Took heavy damage off Fair Isle,” Davos explained. “Last seen before a storm blew up listing badly. We found some wreckage after, not much. No survivors.”

Diony was right. It hurt just as badly either way.

~~~~

Great Wyk fell first. Then Orkmont, then Old Wyk. Robert’s flagship was heading for Pyke, and Thoros hadn’t seen a single second of action. He spent most of the time in his hammock, staring blankly at the wall and drinking.

Why was it always drowning? Was it because he was still nominally a priest of R’hllor? Did the Drowned God hate him? The ship rolled and his stomach rolled. Fuck the Drowned God, Thoros took another swig. Fuck the Iron born. Fuck them all. He would put them all to the flames.

“Thoros...” Diony warned. He rolled to look at her, her dull pain-filled eyes reflecting his pale face back at him.

“Why not,” He hissed.

“Oh well, what the hell?” Diony tried to joke.

“Precisely,” Thoros toasted her.

They watched the walls of the Castle of Pyke loom together, from the deck of the King’s flagship.

“Look at those fucking bridges,” Diony said glumly. Thoros looked at them. One man standing on one of those bridges could fight an entire army to a standstill. His right hand twitched to the pommel of his sword. The scar on his left hand ached. 

“Excuse me,” said a voice. It was one of the northern lords, a bannerman of Lord Stark. He was blond and blue eyed and looked terribly nervous. Thoros felt a stabbing pain in his heart.

“You... you have a bear as a daemon,” the young man stammered. His own daemon, a husky, looked up earnestly. 

“Aye….” Thoros drawled. He went back to putting the chain mail around Diony’s shoulders. They were going to take as many of the Iron born to the Drowned God’s hall as possible. It wouldn’t do to arrive without a welcome present. And to do that, he couldn’t have his daemon taking a crossbow bolt to the gut.

“The bear is my house sigil,” the man blushed. 

“You’re a Mormont?” Thoros looked over his shoulder casually. The man nodded.

“Can I fight with you? I think it must be a sign from the Old Gods.”

“I plan to be on the front line,” Thoros warned. “I don’t think your Old Gods would want you there.”

“There’s honor in fighting on the front line,” the Mormont said, and Thoros felt the stabbing pain again. He put the custom helmet on Diony’s head and then smacked it hard to make sure it was on all the way.

“I’m not looking for honor,” Thoros said flatly.

“I’ll fight with you all the same unless you object,” Mormont replied evenly.

“No,” Thoros sighed. “Do whatever makes you happy.”

He had finished one wineskin by the time his feet were on the beaches of Pyke. The fighting was fierce and bloody, punctuated by the boom of the catapult. They all stopped when the wall finally gave, in a crashing groaning explosion of stone. And then there was a silence, while the royal forces stared at each other and at the hordes of archers waiting to raze the first people to try the breach.

Thoros popped the cork on his second wineskin and took a long drink. His last drink? He ran his sword across the blade of his hand. The blade ignited. R’hllor at least had yet to let him down. Maybe everything had been leading to this moment, on the beaches, the sand now more red than white. The cloudless sky was still beautiful though. Like Beric’s eyes, that blue.

He charged into the breach. 

He felt the arrows wizzing past his head, one bouncing off his chest plate. He caught the first castle defender in the throat, the second in the chest as he reversed his blade under his arm. He felt a ripple through his brain as Diony clawed a man across the face, and he stumbled screaming away. She roared and sank her teeth into the next man’s shoulder, biting through his leather armor. She shook him and then threw him against the wall with a crunch.

“Please!” Thoros had disarmed a trembling swordsman. “I yield, please don’t—“ Thoros stuck his sword into his stomach and jerked sideways. His opponent fell backwards clutching his entrails in surprise. Hold on Beric, I’m coming.

He cut another man down through the thigh, and then engaged in a brief struggle with a slightly more well-trained opponent that was ended when Mormont jumped in with his blade to the man’s ribs.

At a certain point, it all just blurred into an endless series of smoking corpses. He remembered crossing one of those freaky bridges, the entire world pitching beneath his feet. He forced his way across, head butting an unfortunate opponent off the bridge and listening to him scream all the way down to the ocean below.

At some point his nose had broken again. He knew Diony had taken a blade to her back paw, and it was sending dull waves of agony through both of them.

Normally his sword burned out at a certain point, but the flames were still ravenously licking the steel. When he stabbed an archer in the face, the man’s hair flamed up with a foul acrid smell.

Around him, the sounds of fighting were slowly dying away, being replaced with the whimpers and groans of the wounded. Thoros ground his teeth. He should be dead. Why wasn’t he dead?

“Help,” a man gasped, grabbing his ankle. Thoros decapitated him smoothly. He was supposed to be dead. What more did they want from him?

“Stop,” Diony said finally, catching his shoulder. “They lost. It’s over.”

And Thoros slumped against her, burying his face in her fur so that nobody else would see he was crying.

Four days of feasting in the ruined rubble of Pyke followed. Thoros was rarely sober and he remembered little of what transpired. What he remembered was on the fifth day when a badly damaged Lord Steffon limped into the harbor.

It was a miracle. Hallelujah.

When Lord Beric Dondarrion stepped off the gangplank, completely unharmed, he was greeted by a cannonball of a hug.

“Thoros?” Beric said surprised, staggering backwards as Thoros’ fingers curled in his overcoat. 

“I thought you were dead,” Thoros blurted.

“I’m not,” Beric said uncertainly. “The squall blew us well off course, and with the damage the ship took, it put us a week behind schedule.”

Thoros hadn’t let go.

“I thought that would be the last time I saw you,” Thoros whispered. “The last thing I said to you.”

Beric’s eyes widened in understanding.

“Oh! I’m sorry, you were surprised, I should have asked you. I’m not mad at you—I’ve been feeling terrible actually, I.... are you drunk?”

Thoros was too gone to consider lying.

“Very,” he said.

“Okay, let me get you back to wherever your rooms are... it’s midday! Why are you drunk?”

“I thought you were dead,” Thoros repeated.

Beric threw Thoros’ arm over his shoulders and staggered with him back to the castle.

Thoros fell asleep half in Beric’s lap. He must have slept an entire day. When he woke he was by himself.

“Beric and Ky are bringing back breakfast,” Diony poked her head up from the foot of the bed. “I told them to let you sleep it off and you’d be fine.”

“I thought they were dead,” Thoros said numbly. Diony licked his foot and he squirmed. “Stop it!”

“Oh good, I was starting to think you had brain damage. That’s basically all you’ve managed to say for the last twenty-four hours.”

“Hello?” Beric pushed the door in, carry a bowl of porridge. “Are you awake?”

“Morning,” Thoros grinned. 

“Eat this,” Beric pushed the bowl over. “Are you terribly hungover?”

“Not too bad,” Thoros took the bowl obediently.

“You didn’t tell me you were a hero,” Beric said as Thoros shoveled the gruel into his mouth.

“I’m not.”

“The hero of Pyke! First through the breach!” Beric waved a hand as Thoros swallowed, remembering flashes of that battle.

“So what happened?” Beric asked, his eyes glowing with chivalry and honor and battlefield glory.

“I don’t remember,” Thoros lied. “I was too drunk.”

Beric frowned.

“You went into battle drunk?”

“I thought you were dead, Beric,” Thoros pinched the bridge of his nose and looked up, willing Beric to understand. And Beric seemed to. He took the now empty bowl away gently.

“I’m a hard man to kill,” Beric smiled. It was a beautiful, heart-breaking smile. 

“If you want to touch Diony, you can,” Thoros said abruptly, shifting the conversation.

“Excuse me! Don’t I get a say?!” Diony lifted her head in mock outrage.

“Of course you do,” Beric assured her. “Diony, do you want me to scratch your ears?”

“Yes,” Diony laid her head in his lap and Beric laughed and was running his hand through her hair, and Lord, it felt so good in the worst possible way.

Thoros closed his eyes to avoid looking, to avoid seeing Beric’s long fingers intwined in Diony’s fur, but he could still feel it, his arms prickling with the sensation, his cock twitching awake. Thoros shifted the sheets of his bedding to conceal his... problem.

Beric looked up and smirked at the expression on Thoros’ face.

“Thoros, do you want me to scratch any itches for you?” He teased sitting on the bed next to him. Thoros stared. Was this really Beric? Was this really happening? A day ago, he’d thought Beric was dead. Now he was sitting in his bed, warm and alive and staring at his with a disconcerting intensity.

“I’m going to need a yes or a no here,” Beric drawled, brushing a strand of red hair out of Thoros’ face.

Thoros leaned forward and kissed him. He’d kissed plenty of whores since Neena. But this was different. Beric smiled against his mouth and kissed him back, hand winding into his top-knot just as he had the first night they’d met.

“I’m going to take that as a yes,” Beric teased, his breath tickling Thoros’ ear.

Beric pushed him back against the bed, hand sliding down his chest as he kept kissing him. Thoros felt Beric pulling his small clothes off, his hand curling around Thoros’ length. Thoros stifled a groan in Beric’s shoulder and felt his hips buck helplessly at the friction. Beric’s hand picked up its pace carrying him over the edge, as Beric pressed bruising kisses down his neck and and his collarbone and Thoros felt his body seize as he came.

“You’re okay,” Beric whispered, smoothing his hair, wiping his hand on the sheet with a gentle laugh.

“‘Course,” Thoros panted, trying to catch his breath. “I’ve got you.”

He sat up, very aware that Beric was wearing a lot more clothes than him. He set to work rectifying that situation, clumsily ripping his shirt away, unlacing his breeches. Beric caught his hand with a shuddering gasp.

“Don’t.... I don’t know if I can stop if we get that far.”

“So don’t stop,” Thoros smirked, and pulled his breeches free. 

Beric was already hard, and Thoros hummed as he took him in his mouth.

“Thor—os,” Beric gasped. 

Thoros hummed in acknowledgment, because this whole thing was surreal but he was not going to be the one who stopped it, not after the last week, not after he thought Beric was gone forever. So when he thought Beric was close to spilling, he pulled off with a pop.

“Thoros?” Beric looked down in bewilderment. His golden features adorably flushed, he was perfectly, absolutely perfect. And he was in Thoros’ bed.

“I guess the question is whether you want my mouth or whether you want me,” Thoros grinned. Beric smiled back and kissed him.

“Well if you’re offering,” Beric whispered in his ear, sliding his hand down Thoros’ side to rest on his hip. 

Thoros felt a shiver of lust run through him. 

“Am I your first,” Beric asked shyly.

“Man? Yes,” Thoros admitted. “Be gentle my lord,” he added with a smirk. Beric nipped him playfully in retort.

“Not gentle!” Thoros teasingly protested. Beric kissed him and ground his erection against a Thoros’ leg. He fumbled in his pocket and produced a jar of oil.

“Do you just... have that on you?” Thoros lifted his head.

“Diony suggested it might be useful,” Beric admitted.

Thoros looked around to glare at his daemon, but was distracted by Beric once more turning attention to his cock, wrapping a hand around him from behind.

“I don’t know if I can—,” Thoros trailed off when he felt an awakening twitch. 

“You were saying,” Beric kissed between his shoulders blades, his free hand sliding lower. There was the strange sensation of Beric’s finger inside him and he shifted trying to get used to it and Beric immediately stopped. Thoros rolled his eyes, though Beric could not see the gesture.

“Too much?”

“Darling Beric, do I look like a dainty flower? I don’t want your finger, I want you,” Thoros said, almost dizzy from lust and neediness, from feeling Beric against his back, his hand wrapped around his cock.

“Impatient,” Beric huffed, but he added a second finger. It burned slightly but it was fine, and Thoros was about to add another snide remark when Beric’s fingers grazed a spot that banished all other thought. Beric must have felt a tremor or something pass through him, because he did it again more deliberately, and Thoros felt a whimper escape his mouth.

“See,” Beric purred, low and dark in his ear, as his fingers continued extracting all manner of noises from him. “This is for your own good.”

“Beric...” Thoros groaned, completely torn between wanting Beric to never stop and wanting more and entirely incapable of the rational thought needed to balance those competing desires. Beric’s hand around him had been moving at a slow deliberate place and it was keeping him at a knife’s edge. His hips rolled again, seeking a friction that wasn’t anywhere to be found.

Finally Beric removed his hand, and the feeling of Beric’s cock pressing into his leg vanished. Thoros felt his body instinctively tense.

“Hey, I’ve got you,” Beric whispered, his warm hands running up to Thoros’ shoulders, pressing another kiss on his collarbone, and Thoros felt himself relax. Beric pushing in burned more than his fingers and Thoros felt a whimper escape, but then Beric hit that same spot from before and the discomfort became irrelevant. 

Thoros nearly gnashed his teeth as Beric set a painfully slow rhythm, and bucked under him, trying to force him to hit the spot again. Beric gasped and evidently got the point because he sped up and then Thoros didn’t have much room for any thoughts at all, only the crashing waves of pleasure that carried him over the edge again. Beric groaned when Thoros came and his thrusts sped up and became more frantic, before he finished, collapsing over Thoros.

Thoros waited a moment, feeling Beric’s chest shuddering behind him, before gently pulling away and rolling over so he could face him. Beric looked rumpled and exhausted and impossibly happy. When he saw Thoros had turned, he snuggled closer, burying his face into Thoros’ chest. Thoros smoothed his hair absently. Over Beric’s shoulder, he could see Ky leaning against Diony’s eyes closed.

“I love you,” Beric said, the confession a puff of breath ghosting across Thoros’ skin.

“I’m going to protect you. Keep you alive no matter what,” Thoros said, nose in Beric’s hair.

“You’re supposed to say it back,” Beric groused.

“I love you too. This is more important,” Thoros said earnestly. “You’re never leaving me again.”

The scar on his palm throbbed.

~~~~

Diony still lacked any pretense of subtlety, and sometimes Thoros wondered how he was not dumped on the first boat back to Myr and Beric returned to Blackhaven in disgrace. His only conclusion was that they had been friends for so long that people no longer found it odd to see them together. That and after his performance at Pyke, most people seemed to think him mad. If his daemon wanted to follow Beric’s daemon around from dawn till dusk, maybe that was how daemons behaved in Essos.

All the same it was hard to stay annoyed with her. Hard to stay annoyed at all really, when he had Beric in his bed, in his tent, in the wine cellar of the Red Keep, laughing at his continued struggles on the jousting pitch, kissing each bruise after. 

“You’re going to be late for the melee,” Beric broke off that thought with a gasp and Thoros smiled, determined to hear that sound again.

“Fuck... the melee...” he managed at last, because how could anything matter except this.

“What would the King say?” Beric laughed, spilling in Thoros’ hand. Maybe it was the sight of that which pushed Thoros over the edge, collapsing against Beric’s back as everything spun. It took a second to catch his breath and remember the question.

“That’s your problem,” he flopped on the bed and looked over cheekily. “You’re the lord.”

Beric sighed and kissed him. 

“You made a mess,” he said in a tone that was supposed to be reproachful but sounded too blissful to hit the mark.

Thoros rolled over and grabbed a wash rag.

“Didn’t know you needed me to wipe your ass, my lord,” he teased, cleaning him off and starting to lace up Beric’s breeches.

“Speaking of... lording,” Beric waved a hand, fumbling for the right word. “My mother wants to see me. She has some news that can’t be shared over raven.”

“Sounds bad,” Thoros scrunched his face.

“I think she just misses my company. She doesn’t understand what important business keeps me in King’s Landing,” Beric smirked, leaning down to give Thoros a lingering kiss.

“Is that what I am?” Thoros said slyly, looking up at him. “Important business?”

“You’re a priest,” Beric kissed him again.

Thoros made a doubtful noise. He had lived in Westeros for fifteen years now, he barely remembered the words. He hadn’t prayed in a decade, unless you counted the occasional devotions that Beric wrung out of him in bed.

“My priest,” Beric added. That sounded more accurate, and they kissed again. The bells from the Sept of Baelor rang and Thoros realized he really was late for the melee. Beric laughed as Thoros jumped to his feet, scrambling to get his clothes on.

“I’ll see you at the harvest festival,” Beric promised, and Thoros gave him the briefest smile. Sometimes he wished he had committed more of that moment to memory, the last time Beric was truly his and nobody else’s. As it was, he just remembered the gold of Beric’s hair, his usual open smile, his sunny summer lord effortlessly elegant and lounging on his bed.

~~~~

He saw him before the harvest festival, not a week later. It was a wild and stormy night, and Thoros was in his chambers in the Red Keep with a bottle of wine, ironically writing a letter to Beric. Then the door slammed open, and Beric himself stood there, dripping, hair soaked and matted against his forehead.

“Beric—“ Thoros set his quill down with a smile, and then Beric was across the room, pinning him against the wall with a crushing kiss. It was needy and desperate and Thoros could feel Beric shaking against him.

It was utterly different than any time before, even the first time, and Thoros had to grab his shoulders and hold him away.

“What’s wrong?” He said bluntly, taking in Beric’s ashen features, the skittering gaze that could not quite meet his eyes.

“My mother has arranged for me to be betrothed,” Beric mumbled. “House Dayne of Starfall.”

“Oh,” Thoros said, sitting down on the bed.

“I’m sorry,” Beric looked up at him miserably. “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorr—“ Thoros pulled him closer and kissed him to stop him from babbling, felt his trembling body slowly ease into stillness.

“It is my duty,” Beric finally said softly. “I must give my house an heir. House Dayne is a good match.”

“What’s her name?” Thoros asked, kissing Beric’s hand to show he understood. Because he did. Hadn’t he warned Diony a thousand years ago that this day would come?

“Dayne,” Beric repeated confused.

“Her given name,” Thoros sighed, lacing their fingers together and trying to memorize what that looked like.

“I don’t know,” Beric admitted. “Starts with A, I would assume. I’m supposed to ride for Starfall in a week. She’s young, it’ll be a long betrothal. But once I swear my oath to her, I can’t... and then I couldn’t... not without seeing you first.”

Ky suddenly landed on Thoros shoulder, leaning with all his weight against the side of his head. Thoros reached a tentative hand up and stroked his feathers, and Ky gave a low mournful cry.

“If you can learn to love her, that would be for the best I think,” Thoros said carefully, still petting Ky. “I will always want you to be happy.”

“And I will always want you,” Beric said, looking down at him on the bed, voice cracking. “How can I—when you’re not—“

Thoros pulled him down and kissed him again, because he sensed Beric was losing his self-control and he did not think he would make it through Beric’s tears. Their kiss continued in the frenetic pace of earlier.

“Please,” Beric whispered against his ear, “I don’t want our last time to be sad. I don’t want to feel anything but you.”

So that was his last memory of him, half naked and bent over the desk, every thrust from Thoros rattling the drawers, as Beric gasped his name, over and over, as if saying it enough times would make it stick.

Later they cuddled by the window and watched the storm break, watched the dawn of a new day. 

“Am I your first?” Thoros asked teasingly, holding Beric tighter, remembering a morning on the Iron Islands a lifetime ago. Beric looked up, face serious.

“No. But I wanted you to be my last,” he said quietly.

Thoros didn’t have a response for that.

~~~~

They still saw each other after that, of course, at the tournaments in the Stormlands, a few of the larger celebrations in King’s Landing.

Thoros fell back into habits of drinking too much and whoring too much, which the King was only too pleased to encourage. King Robert preferred small brunettes, and if they had blue or gray eyes, so much the better. Thoros preferred the opposite approach. He wasn’t picky—redheads like himself or brunettes or raven beauties from Quarth or the ebony-skinned smiling Summer Islanders. Just no blondes. Diony never said a word. Mostly she just ate. She really was getting rather fat, but Thoros refused to acknowledge that they were doing anything less than okay.

He had lost Beric twice now. This second time hurt less, but in a different way. Because Beric was still alive, still there, still warm and breathing and sometimes so close that he could touch him. Thoros knew he should stay away from the jousts, but he couldn’t help himself. Watching his golden summer lord compete with Beric’s lady’s favor carefully wrapped around his wrist.

Diony always disappeared, and Thoros knew she was with Ky in these moments. Sometimes as he would fall asleep at night, she would tell him stories about what Beric had been up to, how much Beric missed him, how Beric always looked for him in the crowd. Still fairy tales, but they made Thoros feel better even when they shouldn’t. He and Beric never spoke, a mutual recognition that it would be too hard, that they might say things better left unsaid.

Everything was unraveling. Thoros felt it vaguely, from the bottom of his wineskin. He was starting to see flashes in the fire again, not just the rivers and trees and the cave he had always seen, but ice and winter and a terrible army of the dead. Around him, rumblings of the Targaryens acquiring a Dothraki horde in the East. Lannisters ramping up their military. Lord Stannis doubling the navy. Increased raids from the long silent Iron Islands. And Jon Arryn, always hale for a man in his seventies, had begun coughing blood.

Well let the world fall to pieces. It wasn’t his fight.

Jon Arryn did die, and the King went north to retrieve a new hand. Thoros remembered Eddard Stark vaguely from the rebellion, his great direwolf daemon stalking the battlefield. 

When they returned, King Robert had insisted on throwing a grand tournament, inviting all of his bannermen and the great lords. Thoros knew Beric would be there, and if that wasn’t an excuse to get breathtakingly drunk, he didn’t know what was. He fought in the melee, his fiery sword impossibly light in his hand. What do you want from me? He asked R’hllor as he sent Mace Tyrell tumbling from his horse with just a half-hearted wave of his flaming steel. What was ever the point of this bizarre inscrutable gift? It brought him to Westeros, it led him to Beric, but then? What was the fucking point?

He won, and sat at the winner’s table with King Robert and Ned Stark and Sandor Clegane. Robert (around Ned there were still traces of Robert) insisted on jamming his crown down around Thoros’ ears.

“You won! It’s yours!” Robert had laughed. “Somebody please take this fucking thing!”

It was a jest made in all seriousness, and Thoros could tell from Ned’s expression that he knew it. Poor Robert, the cursed thing really was very heavy and uncomfortable.

Peering out from below the lopsided crown of the seven kingdoms, he saw Beric watching him blankly. As soon as their eyes met, Beric looked away, but it sapped whatever joy was left from Thoros’ victory earlier that day.

~~~~

Another year, and only a receding hairline and a growing gut to show for it. Diony could barely squeeze through the door of his chambers.

“I’m getting old,” Thoros said flatly. Nineteen years in Westeros. Mid forties. More than half of his life gone, and what did he have to show for it? Some stolen moments of fumbling in the dark with a man long sacrificed to the Lord of Blackhaven.

“Still ugly as ever though,” Diony rumbled.

“You look like you have mange,” Thoros informed her.

“It’s your damn baldness that’s doing it,” Diony shot back, licking some leftover honey off her paw. 

“Aren’t you going to tell me that I’m more than this?”

“Maybe you’re not,” Diony shrugged.

The only reason he went to the great hall was to get more wine, and the only reason he stopped was because he heard Beric’s name.

“Lord Beric Dondarrion. Take a hundred men to the false knight Ser Gregor’s keep. Bring him justice in the name of Robert of House Baratheon, first of his name, King of the Andals and the First Men,” Ned Stark’s voice did not quaver, for all that he leaned heavily on his cane. Jon Arryn had looked like that in the end, Thoros recalled.

Beric’s voice did not quaver either as he assented. Two men of honor, sworn to justice, to fight monsters like Gregor Clegane.

It stunk. And not just the rotting fish that the small folk had dropped on the floor. The gears of Thoros’ brain clicked furiously through the fog of wine. Such fortuitous timing that the attack had come while Robert was away. And from Gregor Clegane. A man only good for killing and following orders. But there was only one person giving the orders. Beric was riding with a hundred men straight into Tywin Lannister’s hands.

“Don’t go,” was the first thing that Thoros said to Beric, swinging the door to his chambers open and breaking a three year silence.

Beric looked up, a little older too, though he wore it more gracefully. If he was surprised to see Thoros, he gave no sign.

“He’s murdering innocents. I have been charged by the hand of my king. How can I stay?”

“It’s a trap.”

“It’s the right thing to do.”

Why did Thoros love the ones who valued their lives so little?

“I’m coming with you,” he said flatly.

Beric’s expression tightened. He cleared his throat uncomfortably.

“Thoros,” he began, an unnecessary warning.

“Relax,” Thoros scoffed, trying to hide his hurt. “If you’re worried I’ll be bored, don’t be. I’ll bring some of the King’s best bottles from the cellar and stop for a milkmaid along the way.”

Beric’s expression shuttered. Diony had whispered in his ear one night that there had been nobody else since Thoros. Thoros couldn’t say the same, but fuck it, he wasn’t the one who left.

“As you please, Ser,” Beric inclined his head politely.

“I’m not a Ser,” Thoros snapped and stormed off.

He stopped for two out of sheer spite, even though one was blond and he had to shut his eyes not to picture the wrong person. He came to regret that, that the last moments they spent together whole were ruined by his bad temper, his childish resentment that his presence brought Beric pain.

The ambush caught them crossing at Mummer’s Ford, the first wave of crossbow bolts taking out a fifth of their number. Thoros had the advantage of being easy to pick out with his red robes and flaming sword, and the men rallied around him, their horses fighting to stay afoot in the water. When the calvary hit, Thoros was ready, but the whole time he was searching for the starry cape that should have been fluttering in the breeze.

Finally, he heard the roar of a man that could only be the Mountain, and he looked and Beric was charging—oh Lord—lance down like he was in a joust. Diony was on top of them even before Beric’s body had hit the water, the Mountain’s lance broken off in his chest like a tree branch, red petals blooming from his tunic and billowing out into the water. Diony snarled and scooped him up and the Mountain apparently cared less for the sport of killing daemons for he did not give chase.

The fighting was vicious, and Thoros lost them, but he could fight the harder and marshal the retreat knowing Diony was with Beric. They lost sixty men, more than half their number, scrambling into the forest and away from that bloody ravine.

One of Lord Stark’s men had been a Tully man before that and knew the area, guiding them to a cave.

As soon as Diony staggered in, one paw curled protectively around Beric, Thoros had him on a blanket beside the fire. His color was bad, each breath a gargling bloody battle.

Thoros had some basic medical training—all the red priests did—but he needed nothing to know it was a lost cause. He drew the foot of lance from Beric’s chest anyway, poured boiling wine in the hole, squeezing Beric’s wrist, feeling his hummingbird pulse falter and fade with every second.

Ky was lying limp in Beric’s hand, and Thoros didn’t have the heart to move him, though it made stitching the wound harder.

Beric didn’t say much that Thoros could hear, but his eyes focused on Thoros’ face, and once he gave a brief pained smile.

It was dark when Ky dissolved into golden dust, and Thoros tried to stop it with a shout. When he looked back up to Beric’s face, the light was gone, eyes looking blankly upward. Thoros kissed his forehead and closed them. 

The men wanted to bury Beric. They’d watched him nurse him all afternoon and evening uneasily, and there had been some murmurs of a quick death being kinder. Thoros’ blade had flamed at that, and nobody brought it up again.

Thoros personally thought a pyre more appropriate than burial, though they could ill afford to give their position away. Beric deserved to soar the winds as Ky had. Perhaps he would be with Ky. Nobody knew what happened when when a human and their daemon died. Thoros leaned over and mumbled prayers half-remembered. He was a bad priest, but he had been Beric’s priest and there was no one else. I failed you, he thought, as his mouth spoke of restoring light. I promised I would keep you safe, I would have given anything to keep you safe, and.... Beric gave a shuddering gasp.

Thoros fell back, staring. 

“Thoros,” Beric whimpered, eyes rolling. Thoros scrambled back to his side, grabbing his hand, his hair, pressing his ear against a chest that resonated with a dull heartbeat.

“I’m so cold,” Beric mumbled, and it was true, he was like ice. “...where is Ky?”

Thoros met Diony’s gaze mutely.

The bear curled around Beric, licking his face.

“Ky’s waiting,” she said gently. “He’s waiting for you. But you can’t see him just yet. You have to stay with us.”

Thoros swallowed. There were stories about men without daemons, soulless monsters no longer human. But Beric knew him, knew Diony, surely the Lord would bring Ky back as he had brought Beric? He wouldn’t leave a man without a soul?

Beric’s groping hand found Diony’s ragged stump of an ear and scratched. Thoros looked at them through a sudden welling of tears, a miracle, Lord you meant me to protect Beric all along. Then he realized he’d felt nothing. No feedback, good or bad, no more than if he himself had touched Diony. He looked at her, startled, and she nodded to show that she’d felt it too.

No the Lord wouldn’t leave a man without a soul. But he might expect a man to share one.

~~~~

They fell back into their old ways easily. Beric’s death had released him from any vows. And even if it hadn’t, how could it be betrayal, knowing they already shared what they did?

But it wasn’t quite their old ways, not exactly. Beric was always cold, always numb. There was something desperate about the way he made love now, the way he clung to Thoros, as if he were a lifeline in a wild sea.

“Why do I only feel alive when I’m with you,” Beric panted against his ear, looking down at Thoros, gripping his thighs. 

Thoros gasped at the slow pace, the agonizingly slow rhythm of Beric’s cock against a spot that made him see stars, unable to move where Beric had him pinned.

“You are alive,” Thoros ground out, between the waves of pleasure and the interminable waits in between.

“You keep me warm,” Beric said, kissing him until Thoros came breathless in his arms.

They lived in the cave and fought in the forests and along the rivers of Thoros’ fire dreams. This then was the world Diony had promised. They fought for justice, and they were free to be whoever they wished. 

When they got the news that Robert had died, Thoros felt a flash of pity for a boy long lost. They were all living on borrowed time now, he knew that. Oh well, what the hell. If their time was dwindling, then it was sweetly spent. 

Sometime between Beric’s third death and his fourth, Thoros took a javelin to the side. It was touch and go for a moment, but Thoros had survived worse. When he finally woke from the haze of pain, he was by a campfire, Beric watching him.

“How long have I been out?” He muttered groggily, fingering the bandage.

“I don’t know,” Beric stiffly got to his feet and came over, knelt by his side. “I lose time when I’m not with you, things don’t... don’t stay in my head like they should.”

Thoros touched Beric’s face, his one good eye staring forlornly back. He trailed his fingers down his neck to the dark scarring where the noose had snapped his spine. 

“I don’t want you going out on raids anymore,” Beric said abruptly. 

“What?” Thoros blinked. “We need every sword we have.”

“I can’t lose you,” Beric shook his head stubbornly, “I can’t bear it. Three times you’ve brought me back, and each time it’s worse, each time I lose more of who I am—you’re the last thing I still have Thoros.”

Thoros couldn’t struggle into a sitting position, but he pulled Beric down next to him, between him and the fire, trying to heat up the too-cold limbs. He felt dizzy and terrible—he had sworn a vow to keep Beric here at any cost, but some part of him wondered if that was any kindness. A bad priest and a worse friend he was, selfish to the bone.

“The last thing you’ll have is your honor, Beric,” he said quietly, stroking his hair. “You’ve lived without me before, but you’ve never lived without honor.”

“It wasn’t life without you,” Beric turned, wearily. “I have much less now and much more. But you can’t leave me. Promise you won’t leave me.”

“I’ll do my best,” Thoros tried to smile. It came out more as a grimace, and from Beric’s expression, it wasn’t good enough.

“You promised to keep me alive,” Beric reminded him. Thoros raised an eyebrow. 

“If you’re gone, I won’t remember... I won’t remember how to live. There’ll be nothing to keep me here.”

Thoros shook his head.

“The Lord of Light keeps you here. I just say the words.”

“But it has to be you. You see that don’t you? It’s not because you’re a good priest, it’s because you’re my priest,” Beric touched their foreheads together. 

Thoros swallowed. It had the ring of truth, but he didn’t have to like it. Surely after all Beric had been through, the Lord would keep him safe.

“I’m still going on raids.”

“Diony goes with you then. I’m frightening enough now without a bear.”

Thoros could smile at that.

“You don’t frighten me,” he said and he kissed him until Beric’s lips were as warm as his.

~~~~

Sometime after Beric’s sixth death, a red priestess came. 

Melisandre of Asshai. She had pretty hair and a crocodile smile. But she smelled of fire and served R’hllor. R’hllor who had given him more than he had ever dared to want. All R’hllor wanted in return was a boy. 

Robert’s boy, you had to be a fool or blind not to see it. She brought more silver than he’d seen in months. Say what you would, he drove a much harder bargain than his father.

Don’t worry, he wanted to say, as she led Gendry and his snorting bull away. You will end up where you were meant to be. R’hllor promised me that much. And what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

Later Beric had been angry at him. Said it was wrong. Thoros didn’t know how to explain. R’hllor had brought Beric back. Next to that, what was right and wrong? What were principles and childhood scars and a good friend who had been a terrible king? For Beric to live, Thoros would have given the world. What was one boy?

~~~~

“I just got bit by a dead bear,” he gasps, the rum doing pathetically little to keep the pain at bay. He’s looking up at a slate gray sky, howling winds buffeting snow around them.

A fucking bear. It seems like a betrayal. Diony has his arm in her mouth, is gently tugging him upright. The slash marks across her face from where the snow bear got her are oozing, but it doesn’t hurt as much as the guilt in her features. 

“It’s not your fault,” he grips her fur. He lolls, half his weight on her, not his feet. Every step sends a blinding agony through him. And it’s not. The snow bear was three times her size—she’s not fat any more, she’s gaunt and ragged. Less a teddy bear and more a skeletal thing of teeth and claws. Hunger, fire and death, they have a way of winnowing you down. Whatever’s left, that’s you.

“Aye. A fighter. We both are. So fucking fight,” Diony hisses in his ear. He glares at her reproachfully and takes a swig of rum. Probably more rum than blood in him at this point, but at least it keeps the cold at bay.

Beric walks behind him. He knows if he stops, Beric will stop, and they’ll both die for sure. So he doggedly puts one foot in front of the other.

Jorah Mormont is here. That’s funny. And Gendry Waters. Ghosts from his past. They don’t seem very real, fading in and out of shadows. Only Beric is real, a candle flickering in the dark. The memories overlap in a jumble, the walls of Myr and the castle of Pyke jumbling in his head. But all paths lead to Beric, he was always meant to find him.

They have to run then, and Diony tosses him on her back, her own breath coming ragged as they skid across the ice.

“Wouldn’t have made it if you were still fat,” Thoros tries to joke. “Ice would’ve cracked right in.”

Diony normally would growl at this, but she only licks his face tenderly. Beric is staring at them, with that distant blank expression he gets now, when something’s happening that he’s struggling to process. Nobody else is looking at them. They know he’s a goner. Thoros vaguely hopes Beric doesn’t figure it out. Give him another night of good sleep.

“Somewhere there’s a place where you’re not hurting anymore,” Diony whispers to him, in her warm bear burr. Thoros leans against her. Beric cautiously approaches and sits next to him, interlacing their hands.

“I don’t want to go to that place. I like this place,” Thoros tries to protest, his speech thick on his lips. Is he drunk?

“You’re cold, Thoros. Colder than I am,” Beric says in a small voice. He presses Thoros’ hand under his furs, against his chest, in a vain attempt to warm it up. It doesn’t work, but Thoros can feel Beric’s heartbeat beneath his fingers and that’s enough.

He falls asleep to that tempo, that slow steady beat, a soft reminder that though he’s broken many promises, this one he’s managed to keep.


End file.
